


the branded dawn

by to-the-voiceless (larkgrace)



Series: oathkeepers [2]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Dark Knight Questline (Final Fantasy XIV) Spoilers, F/M, Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood Spoilers, this is the pinnacle of My Bullshit, what if we took the soul crystal lore and put it somewhere else?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:54:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25395700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/larkgrace/pseuds/to-the-voiceless
Summary: Requirements: Completion of the Main Scenario quest “Stormblood,” completion of the Job Quest “Our Compromise.”--"On the day of the first sunrise over a free Ala Mhigo, Aymeric found his morning routine arrested by a bullet gouge in his armor."
Relationships: Aymeric de Borel/Warrior of Light
Series: oathkeepers [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1838854
Comments: 4
Kudos: 24





	the branded dawn

**Author's Note:**

> this is a sequel to [the blackest night](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24530857) and won't make much sense without it; i strongly recommend reading that first!
> 
> [originally written](https://to-the-voiceless.tumblr.com/post/616693865796304896/the-branded-dawn) during the wondrous tails 2020 event.

On the day of the first sunrise over a free Ala Mhigo, Aymeric found his morning routine arrested by a bullet gouge in his armor.

Logically, he had already known it was there; had, in all likelihood, remarked upon it the night before as he had been taking his surcoat _off._ Yet in the light of day the shallow trench left in his pauldron seemed far more menacing than it had under the gentle lamp-glow of the night. He ran his thumb over the mark, cradling the pauldron in his hands; it cut through the ridges and whorls of the metal at an angle just below the upper rim, with one end much wider and deeper, as though the bullet had struck at an angle and been reflected away. If the shooter had been aiming any higher, or if he had raised his arm a moment later…

At his back, he heard a rustle of cloth, and a rasp of, “Is something wrong?”

He turned to see Hanami propped up against the headboard, the sheets pooled about her ankles and her head tipped back to rest against the wood. She wore a sleeveless shirt, threadbare with use, and an oversized pair of cotton pants; she had a shawl, too, one which he hadn’t seen her wear before, but it was tossed over the foot of the bed to allow her to brace a towel-wrapped bundle against her shoulder. Ice crystals, he thought; she had mentioned a wrenched shoulder, and muscle injuries always were slow to heal.

Her hair was mussed with sleep, her eyes slitted low in the first rays of dawn peeking through the window. The last pink highlights of her hair caught fire in the sun, the flyaway strands of her bangs lighting red instead of brown; her skin was cast gold and the dip of her scales across her neck and down her collar were like ivory marble in the morning. Lit up like a day-goddess against the white of the sheets, dark silhouettes and heavenly light.

“I am quite well,” he promised—lingering aches of exertion aside, but that was hardly worth mentioning. “Only distracted. I believe the events of yesterday are...beginning to catch up to me.”

“That is _not_ what I asked,” Hanami said, the gold-cast of her skin wrinkling with shadows as she frowned at him. She dropped her towel-pack, though, and with her newly freed hand she reached out, palm up, a silent beckon with curled fingers.

Aymeric went gladly, setting the damaged pauldron back on the floor next to its mate. Three swift strides brought him close enough to sink down atop the mattress, resting his hand in her own and leaning forward when she tugged, biting back a startled grunt at the chill of her skin from the ice. He slid forward enough to lean next to her, and she released his hand to brush her fingers along the line of his bangs. He shivered at the cold touch.

“What is wrong,” she said, and this time it didn’t sound as though she had asked a question.

“Truly, ‘tis nothing,” he assured her, leaning into her touch despite the chill. “I just happened to notice the damage to my armor from yesterday. ‘Twould seem that not even high aurum is impervious to Garlean bullets.”

“Are you hurt?” Hanami sat up, swiftly enough that he felt the mattress rock beneath her, her hands—one warm, one cool—reaching to cup the caps of his shoulders. “I thought I—”

Aymeric shook his head, catching her wrists and drawing her hands back down. “I am unharmed, thanks entirely to your timely intervention,” he said again. “For that matter, I neglected to thank you properly for that.”

“Do _not,”_ Hanami insisted, and he felt the dull scratch of her nails through his shirt as she pressed her hands against him. “What else could I have done?”

Fury bless this woman, he thought, who saw her own everyday miracles as _obligation._

“What exactly did you _do,_ if I may ask?” he said instead. He had thought himself at least passingly familiar with her skillset, and knew her to be capable of withstanding blows that would drop an ordinary man where he stood, but he had never known her to be able to grant such extraordinary defenses to another person.

Hanami shook her head, and Aymeric thought the slight moue of her lips stemmed more from confusion than anger—though she _was_ angry, he could see that much, at some remembered foe if he had to guess from her distant stare into his sternum. He gave the heels of her palms a gentle squeeze of reassurance.

“I was not sure if it would work,” she said; he stifled a sigh—he had known for a while that the _whats_ of her power held less meaning for Hanami than the _wherefores,_ and he could almost hear the journey her thoughts had taken to skip over his question and on to the next. “I had just…”

She pulled one hand free, unhooking her fingers from his shirt as her scowl deepened, as she shook her head again, short and sharp—and he watched in awe as she reached toward her own chest, dispelled a glamour of some sort—it _had_ to have been a glamour, because Aymeric could not imagine he would have failed to notice the pendant hanging at her neck for so long.

The chain itself was unremarkable—silver, maybe, or some alloy variant, considering the tarnish he could see between the links—but the pendant was stone, a deeper and richer red than any gem he had ever seen, like staring into a wineglass. Its outline was rough, he thought, though it was difficult to see the exact dimensions under the band of metal wrapped around it, anchoring a loop at the top to thread the chain through. It shimmered in the light coming through the window, not with any facet-cuttings he recognized but with something deeper, far more intricate, far more ancient.

Aymeric knew the theory of soul crystals: precious commodities in Ishgard, the few he was aware of had been mostly reserved for use by the Heavens’ Ward, or passed down as heirlooms among knights of the High Houses. The Knights Dragoon kept their own stock, dwindling over the ages as their owners died or disappeared in territories too perilous for men to go to retrieve them. He had even been charged with gifting a handful of crystals to especially promising Temple Knights, taken from the Vault’s jealously-guarded depths to expedite the development of young battlefield commanders. He had heard rumors to the effect that the machinists at Skysteel had begun experimenting with creating _new_ soul crystals, though he imagined it would take generations for them to be of any great effect. He even knew that Hanami carried a soul crystal: she had _told_ him as much, in her halting, precious tales of her time mastering dark arts in the underbelly of Ishgard. But the object itself had seemed secondary to her experience, in the stories, and he had never paused to think much on it, nor to imagine what it looked like.

Hanami’s soul crystal looked like a heart, jagged at its edges, set aflame in the morning light.

“I did not know if I could do anything to save you,” she said, cupping the crystal in her palm, holding it between them with the chain draping over her calloused fingertips. “But I knew I could try. I had to, if I wanted to do justice to this.”

She relaxed her wrist, tipped the crystal out of her palm to fall back against her chest. Aymeric watched it rest there, over her heart, and fought to reclaim his train of thought from the distraction of the sunlight fracturing across her skin through the stone.

“How did you manage it?” he finally said.

Hanami huffed, releasing his shirt with her other hand and bringing both up to cup around the back of his neck. Both her hands were warm, now—she was always so suffused with fire, he wondered how the frozen streets of Ishgard didn’t melt under her feet. He thought for a moment she might nudge him to tip his temple against her own, but she just held him, warm and gentle.

“What did it feel like?” Hanami asked.

Aymeric let his eyes close as he tried to remember the exact sensations. He remembered thinking, at first, that he _had_ been shot—that the heat running over his body was his own blood rushing from a wound. He had been so warm so suddenly, a near-liquid sensation that reminded him of warming frozen limbs at a fire that was too close for comfort. A burning that hurt, just barely, but almost in a pleasant way. Then the darkness had come, heavy smoke falling down over his vision in a curtain, sluggish and oily and shot through with flickers of blood-red light, scattering across his armor and dancing across his fingertips. The shadows had molded to him like a second skin, the Garlean bullets crumbling to ash before they touched him. He had felt hot like he had bathed in gentle hellfire, shielded by a living shadow—and, now that he cast his mind back, with the clarity of reminiscence piercing the haze of adrenaline, he thought he had felt a presence at his back, watching over his shoulder, not so much a creature as a looming _feeling._ Like being sheltered under the body of a dragon. Like being loved by a thing with fangs.

“I felt very safe,” he said, and leaned forward into Hanami’s grip, coming within a breath of resting his forehead against hers. “In a way I have scarcely felt before.”

Hanami exhaled, a long, shuddering thing, and dropped one hand from his neck to clutch at her glittering soul crystal. “Good,” she said, her voice layered with a low rumble of relief. “That is what I asked for. That is all I wanted.”

“You speak of it as though it is a living thing,” he murmured, bringing one of his own hands to rest on her hip, bracing the other on her bent knee.

“It is,” she said, and while she was not loud her tone was _forceful_ in a way Aymeric had not anticipated. “It remembers. It learns.” Then she unfurled her palm, to tilt the crystal into the light properly, and said, _“Look.”_

He did, drawing back enough to peer closely at the stone in her palm, and realized—

The shimmering effect of the crystal came not from cuts or facets, but from _words,_ dozens upon dozens of lines etched deep in the heart of the stone, layer upon layer spiraling out, spider-webbing out to the jagged points, too miniscule to read as densely packed as they were. And there, near the center, by the crystal’s heart, was a wink of shifting light as slowly, slowly, more lines bloomed like fractures appearing on a fault line, words guided by an invisible stylus. New knowledge being recorded in the palm of her hand, before his very eyes.

On impulse, he reached to pull it closer, and just barely stopped himself before his fingers brushed Hanami’s hand. “May I?” he asked, tentative with the instinct that this was something far more intimate, far more weighty than asking to hold a trinket.

She tipped her head up, too, her phantom fire eyes bright under the fringe of her bangs. He felt a strand of her loose hair brush over their wrists with how close they were as she gave him a long, steady look, more caution in her gaze than he had ever seen from her.

He held very still and waited, hand resting still mere ilms from the fragment of her soul cradled in her palm.

“All right,” she finally said, and tipped her hand, spilling the crystal onto his skin.

Like grabbing a hot coal, that was his first thought: his first instinct at the sudden surge of heat in his palm was to drop the crystal and jerk his hand away. If Hanami’s hands were warm, if her shields had been burning, this was _branding:_ a spike of heat, driven into his body, a pin’s prick magnified a hundred times. He resisted the urge to yelp the way he might have if he had put his hand on the wrong end of a hot poker.

He knew she would never intentionally harm him, though, and that conviction stayed his hand long enough for him to realize that the heat wasn’t _wounding._ He flexed the curl of his hand and felt no damaged skin, only nerves screaming in shock. It was not, he reasoned, actual pain, simply sensations he had not been prepared for, and his body was responding the only way it knew how: with an attempt to remove the new, strange thing. Fear made physical.

He held it closer in defiance, careful not to pull on the chain where it was still looped around Hanami’s neck, and ran his thumb over the surface, wondering if there were etchings there too. There weren’t, and it was smooth, but when he touched it Hanami sat upright as if she’d suddenly had a rod strapped to her spine. The slow rise and fall of her chest, a movement he had hardly registered, stuttered to a stop.

“Hanami?” he said, and flinched away, the soul crystal balancing at the tip of his finger as he nearly dropped it.

“No,” she said, voice tense. Her fingers flexed at the back of his neck. “Just strange. Not bad. ‘M fine.” Under the dark fall of her hair, her eyes shuttered closed. Her breath broke in short, gentle puffs against his chin.

“All right,” he said, and moved his thumb away. Then, on impulse, an echo, whispered into the space between their mouths: “What does it feel like?”

Hanami’s hand trailed up along the base of his skull, setting off a shiver that rattled its way down his spine even as she shuddered alongside him. “Safe,” she murmured, her voice reduced to a hoarse whisper. “Warm. Like—” the hand at his neck trailed down, around, following the curve of his shoulder until she could splay her fingers over his heart, arched just enough to dig her fingernails into the cotton of his shirt. “Like you could reach in. Here. And—” Her exhale trembled, shivered, and leaned back in, close enough to press her forehead to his own. “Safe,” she said again.

He was becoming more accustomed to the warmth, now, and finally felt a second sensation under it: an odd pulsing, like skin trying to blister, a gentle rhythm of aether tapping against the stone’s surface.

Holding it was, he thought, like holding a solar flare wrapped in a heartbeat.

“What is it writing?” he asked; even this close he couldn’t make out the words, tucked as they were in the dips and loops of generations of memories.

Hanami rasped a low sound, a darker cousin to a laugh. She gripped his left wrist, her eyes still closed, and slowly smoothed her hand down toward his elbow, pressing firm against the underside of his forearm. He felt the crystal flare impossibly hotter as she moved. She was no mage, not in the traditional sense, but by some force of miracle or magic she left letters pressed to his skin, glimmering deep red and gloomy purple, the same color as the lightning that had danced over him when she had saved his life. A single line of words took form, shimmering from wrist to elbow, in the space between the spots where the straps of a shield would sit:

_In your darkest hour, in the blackest night, think of me and I will be with you. Always._

It was not her handwriting, it sounded nothing like her, but he still had the fleeting, fanciful thought that he felt marked by her, more permanent than the words that seemed to sink into his skin and dissolve. The warmth of her touch seemed to sink down with them, settling between his sinews and muscles, a reassuring heat that did not fade even when she pulled her hand away.

“I need no shield,” she said, and when her eyes fluttered open they were burning, the glow of her limbal rings white-hot in the close confines of the rising morning. “But when you do, think of me.”

The crystal fell from his fingers as she pulled his hand up to her mouth, pressed a hot, gentle kiss against his wrist. He reached out in return to pull her closer, tucking her under his chin to feel the warmth of her breath fan over his collar, against his throat, and wrapped his liquid-hot arm around her back.

“Always,” he promised.

**Author's Note:**

> From the confines of a crystal, you hear a whisper of approval, and are filled with warmth…  
> Action Learned: Soulbrand.
> 
> with boundless thanks to the fine folks at [the book club](https://discord.gg/9h2scPZ), who specialize in emotional buffs and filthy enabling. i love y'all.


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